Thank you very much Mr. Speaker. I thank my friend for yielding. I want to thank the Chairman of the Rules Committee for his efforts as well. Ladies and gentlemen of this House, we talk a lot, correctly, about creating certainty, alleviating uncertainty – alleviating angst among our people and among our economy. We have an opportunity to bring certainty to a large segment of America that they will not receive a tax increase on January 1.

“Mr. Speaker, we are now at some point and time going to conclude four weeks in session with little to show for it. Over the past month, the Republican Do-Nothing Congress has continued its relentless pursuit of message over substance.

“Designed to fail, that's what this bill is – designed to fail. And, very frankly, you made sure that it was going to fail when you passed the amendment that added the reform bill and this bill together. Designed to fail – how sad.

This legislation puts the special interests ahead of the public interest by weakening the entity that shields responsible consumers from financial abuses. Last year, Congress passed an important Wall Street reform bill in order to prevent a job-destroying financial crisis from happening again. And one of the most crucial parts of that bill was the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a watchdog that would look out for the interests of ordinary Americans who want to sign mortgages, apply for student loans, and start businesses on honest and fair terms. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is empowered to ensure that lenders provide clear, plain-language explanations of loan terms—and to stop the kind of abusive and deceptive loan practices that helped drive our economy off a cliff. If such protections had been in place in the last decade, the odds of a crisis would have been significantly less.

Mr. Speaker, I first want to commend Chairman Charlie Rangel and all of the Members of the Ways and Means Committee for their hard work on this very important, far-sighted legislation – the ‘Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act.’

Congress is on course to pass a Fiscal Year 2008 Consolidated Appropriations bill that rejects the President’s misguided budget cuts and takes steps to reinvest in the priorities of our nation’s citizens – including those in rural America.